To the angel of the church at ...... write....

I don't know how I missed it.  I've read the passages over and over many times, but I never got it. 

The letters to the churches in the book of Revelation aren't written to churches.  They are written to individuals. 

I had to sit and let that sink in when I noticed it.   Those letters with admonitions and declarations like...

" you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead" 

"you have left your first love"

"I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of My God"

"you have a little power, and have kept My word and have not denied My name"


 aren't written to a group of people like I'd always thought.  They're written to living, breathing individuals, who were the leaders of their churches.   

You have to understand that I've always used these letters as a clue as to what a church should be like, or what I should look for in a church (and I'm sure they have value for that) but never like they were written primarily to a person.  If you say "lukewarm" I think of a church, a denomination and therefore by extension, a person.  It's the opposite that's true.  "Lukewarm" referred primarily to a man and by extension to the church.  It was the individual lukewarm people that made the Lukewarm church.

Those letters read a whole new way.